March 28, 2023

Tuesday March 28, 2023. Annette’s News Roundup.

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Kamala is always busy.

In Africa, Kamala Harris Looks to Deepen Relations Amid China’s Influence.

Vice President Kamala Harri‌s ‌has begun a weeklong tour of Ghana and two other African nations as the Biden administration hopes to set a new path for U.S.-Africa ties that focuses on collaboration rather than crises, a trip seen as a significant step toward revitaliz‌‌ing a relationship with Africa that was widely thought to be lagging in recent years.

Ms. Harris, the highest-ranking Biden administration official to visit the continent, will hold an official meeting and news briefing with President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana on Monday before traveling to Tanzania and Zambia, where she had visited more than 50 years ago to learn about public service from her grandfather.

Ms. Harris aims to reassure the United States’ African allies that Washington is focused on fostering innovation and economic growth in the region rather than having a singular focus on addressing corruption and violence on the continent, according to senior U.S. officials. (New York Times).

[Vice President] Harris announced $100 million in assistance for the region and pledged that the United States would be “strengthening our partnerships across the continent of Africa.” The administration also is requesting another $139 million from Congress to help Ghana reduce child labor, improve weather forecasting, support local musicians and defend against disease outbreaks. (AP).

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Next Tuesday, April 4 is Election Day in Wisconsin.

GET OUT THE VOTE IN WISCONSIN AND MORE.
We’re now just eight days away from Election Day for a swing seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, a race that could determine the future of the right to choose in Wisconsin and the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.

Early voting is underway. Let’s do what we can to help them get out the vote for Judge Janet Protasiewicz, whether by a) phonebanking with the Wisconsin Democrats or Grassroots Dems HQ, b) texting with the Working Families Party or NextGen America, c) chipping in to help Judge Janet get her message out or d) just making sure everyone in Wisconsin who wants one has requested an absentee ballot.

We can also ensure we get crucial votes from college students counted by joining the Campus Vote Project, the League of Women Voters and Common Cause and signing up to monitor polling locations on college campuses. (Source: Joe Katz from Rogan’s List).

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Worldwide, the fight for Democracy goes on.

Exiled Belarus opposition leader calls for unified EU, U.S. support.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya says fights in her homeland and Ukraine are linked by desire for democracy, independence from Russia.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s political career began when her husband, Siarhei Tsikhanouski, was jailed after announcing plans to challenge Belarus President Aliaksandr Lukashenko in 2020. The political newcomer ran in her husband’s place, and after Lukashenko was declared the winner in a contest widely viewed as fraudulent, mass protests broke out in Belarus for months.

Tsikhanouskaya, fearing for her safety, fled to Lithuania, where she leads the Belarusian opposition, which includes partisans who are working against the Russians in their attempt to take over Ukraine. Tsikhanouskaya’s group views their support of Ukraine as part of a larger pro-democracy battle pitting that nation and their own against Lukashenko and his ally, Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who seeks to reassert Moscow’s control in the region.

Tsikhanouskaya will be a keynote speaker at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Institute of Politics at Harvard on Friday and share the stage with European Parliament President Roberta Metsola. To read the Q & A with Tsikhanouskaya, click here.

(Harvard Gazette).

Israel’s protests show that Netanyahu finally went too far.

Israel’s prime minister is backing down from his power grab for now. But Israel’s crisis isn’t over.

Throughout the day on Monday, Israel was consumed by protest.

Massive crowds gathered outside the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, and in the streets of its major cities. The economy ground to a halt amid a general strike; everything from airports to Israeli embassies abroad to the country’s 226 McDonald’s franchises shut down. It is the largest protest movement in the entirety of Israeli history, one that has been taking to the streets for the past several months but reached new heights after Netanyahu fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Sunday.

The aim was to stop what Gallant and many other Israelis saw as a mortal threat to its democracy: a judicial overhaul bill that would wreck the country’s separation of powers and allow incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to impose its will on the country with little opposition.

Later in the day, there came signs that the upheaval had an impact: Netanyahu officially announced that he would delay the judicial overhaul until the next legislative session, calling for a “timeout” that could “give a real opportunity for real dialogue.”

How to think about this extraordinary series of events? Is this a sign of Israeli democracy’s strength — or its weakness?

The answer to that question is that it’s both.

Netanyahu’s judicial bill was indeed an existential threat to Israeli democracy. That the country’s people mobilized in extraordinary numbers to block it is a sign of deep support for democracy inside the Israeli population, and a willingness to fight to preserve it.

But at the same time, the fact that they needed to do this at all shows that Israeli democracy truly has been brought to the brink — and that defeat of the judicial overhaul is not the end of the fight.

. . .

Even if this judicial overhaul proposal is defeated —and that very much remains an if — these tensions will not be resolved. They will continue pushing powerful and influential segments of Israeli society to attack democratic rights and principles because those rights and principles stand in the way of their vision for what Israel should look like. And the rest of the country is deeply divided about what the alternative vision should be.

Netanyahu had exploited those fissures for years, but it seems he’s gone too far, too quickly. The response from Israelis has been a resounding rejection of his authoritarianism.

But the infection that threatens the country, however, remains uncured — and may test the country’s democratic immune system again soon. And the next flare-up may yield a different result.

To read the rest of this comprehensive look at where Israeli Democracy stands, click here. (Vox).

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We will make sure DeSantis will fail in his plan, but he has proved that bad behavior can teach us all your name….

Inside Ron DeSantis’s Plan to Ride Anti-vaxxism to the White House.

He was for the COVID-19 vaccines before he was against them, but now Florida’s governor is all-in on vaccine skepticism—and hoping to use the issue to outflank Trump on the right. With the presidential primaries looming, and MAGA activists angling to turn Trump against the vaccines he helped fast-track, experts fear anti-vaxxism could soon become an official plank of the Republican Party.

Ron DeSantis' donors and allies question if he's ready for 2024.

WASHINGTON — Ron DeSantis may be missing his moment.

A number of the Florida governor’s donors and allies are worried his recent stumbles suggest he may not be ready for a brutal fight against Donald Trump. Some feel DeSantis needs to accelerate his timeline to run for the GOP presidential nomination and begin directly confronting Trump if he's to have any chance of thwarting the former president’s momentum. Others believe DeSantis should sidestep Trump altogether and wait until 2028 to run.

At a Sunday luncheon following the annual Red Cross ball in Palm Beach, Florida, a group of 16 prominent Republicans, described by one attendee as a mix of DeSantis backers and Trump "skeptics," discussed misgivings about the governor's standing for the future if he tussles with the former president.

“They liked him — many of them might even support him,” the person who was at the event said of DeSantis. “But they thought on balance that his long-term future was better without him trying to take Trump head on.”

“He will get scarred up” by Trump, the person added.

Then there’s conservative billionaire shipping goods magnate Richard Uihlein and his wife, Elizabeth, whose $500,000 in combined contributions ranked them among the most generous donors to DeSantis’ 2022 re-election campaign.

A person familiar with the strategy around Uihlein’s spending said that right now, “The brakes are pumped,” adding, “The polling really made different people pause.”

A spokesperson for the Uihleins declined to comment.

The fears of some of his own supporters, along with a growing sentiment among GOP operatives that Trump may be impossible to defeat — even with a possible indictment looming over him — present DeSantis with the conundrum of trying to demonstrate that he is a viable presidential candidate before he even launches his anticipated campaign.

NBC News spoke with more than 20 GOP strategists, politicians and donors about whether DeSantis can bounce back from adversity — some of it self-inflicted, some of it the result of constant pressure from Trump — or is destined to wilt under the white-hot lights of a campaign for the highest office in the land. 

For a governor who prides himself on taking bold stands, and winning on the electoral battlefield, DeSantis has not yet shown the strength that gave some Republicans reason to believe he could compete with Trump.

A spokesperson for DeSantis did not return a request for comment for this article. (NBC News).

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School murder in Nashville.

Another mass shooting took place at the Covenant School at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee yesterday afternoon.

- The school teaches pre-school through sixth grade children.

• At least 6 are dead according to early reports, including 3 children.

- The murderer, a 28 year old woman, later identified as Nashville resident, Audrey Hale, was killed.The police interviewed her father.

Biden renews push to ban assault weapons in wake of Nashville shooting.

President Joe Biden on Monday revived his push for a federal assault weapons ban in the aftermath of a deadly elementary school shooting.

“I call on Congress again to pass my assault weapon ban. It’s about time we begin to make some progress, but there’s more to learn,” Biden said at a Small Business Administration Women’s Business Summit.

The 28-year-old female suspect, who has not been identified, was killed in an altercation with police. The woman had at least two semi-automatic rifles and a handgun, police said.

Biden called the shooting “heartbreaking” and a “family’s worst nightmare.”

“We have to do more to stop gun violence; it’s ripping our communities apart — ripping the soul of this nation,” Biden said. “And we have to do more to protect our schools, so they aren’t turned into prisons.” (Politico).

Yes, his family’s Christmas card.

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New Maryland Abortion Clinic is a life-line for West Virginians.

New Maryland provider opening in post-Roe 'abortion desert.’

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Does David Hare have a point?

Musicals are killing theatre, by David Hare.

This summer I walked past the Royal Court theatre in Sloane Square. Since 1956, the greatest names in British playwriting had shone from its red neon. Now it had a fake-cute message reading BRB WRITERS AT WORK. (BRB means Be Right Back.) It pierced my heart. Why not just mount a neon saying ‘We’ve got nothing worth putting on’? I felt the same dismay this week passing Wyndham’s, by far the most perfect playhouse in London for the spoken word. Squatting there was yet another musical, the one the profession nicknames Wokelahoma. Musicals have become the leylandii of theatre, strangling everything in their path. It’s a crushing defeat to see Wyndham’s without a straight play. Is it our fault? Are dramatists not writing enough good plays which can attract 800 people a night? Will well-known actors not appear in them? Or did producers mislay their balls during lockdown? (The Spectator)

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My response - David Hare sees an invasion of the musical - a form of theatre created initially by Americans - in London pushing out plays, the form that honors “the written word.” And he laments the decline of “balls” in producers. You know, those male guys who take risk to put on plays. Did he mean to ask where are The Sonia Friedmans (“Leopoldstadt”), Caro Newlings (“The Lehman Trilogy”), Liz McCanns (all of Edward Albee), Eva Prices (“Peter and the Star Catcher”) even Annette Niemtzows (“The Kentucky Cycle.”)?

Yea, Hare does manage to be anti-musicals, anti-American and misogynistic in one short paragraph.

But does he have a point that the straight play seems no longer to have a guaranteed returning audience that encourages financial success to justify the risk for producing plays? Is there so little audience for solid plays qua plays in London and New York? Is the fault of the plays or of the economics of our commercial theatre that challenges all but special event and special form plays?

Currently in New York, Leopoldstadt with Stoppard and the Holocaust as the draw is a special event play, and Life of Pi with a big title and challenging story telling that requires and delivers amazing design and puppetry is a special form play.

Both, of course, were created in London, not America. So the issue for Broadway may be more precisely asked- where is the support for the American straight play? Or is this merely a question, once again, about the current economics of commercial theatre?

Why don’t we find a way to present to larger audiences great plays like Lynn Nottage’s Ruined on Broadway or the West End? Why do plays by serious playwrights like Lynn Nottage, Danai Gurira, Matthew Lopez, even Tony Kushner (“Angels in America”)last only a short time? And almost never pay back their intrepid investors and fierce producers?

The fault, my dear Sir David, may be in the economics, not the playwrights, not the producers. 800 playgoers a performance don’t do the trick for recoupment, at least not on Broadway, where full price is not the norm.

In 2022-23 on Broadway, even with discount after discount in place, the average ticket price for a play is still $105.48. (Source Broadway League). That means that a family of 4 needs to spend $400+ to see a play.

How do we cut the price of tickets?

Joe Biden is helping, challenging fees upon fees, across the board, and that presumably includes fees on theatre ticket sales.

But it is the Theatres themselves that are the low hanging fruit crying for change. Perhaps the theatre owners themselves can be called upon to voluntarily cut the price of “rent” paid by a show to them including their share of gross revenues, and profits, in order to enable plays to have a chance to recoup and be profitable?

If they generously did that, all the world and you too, I suspect, will be shocked at how many producers, both male and female, will have the “balls” to put on straight plays. (Commentary - A.Niemtzow).

One more thing. One needn’t attack brilliant musical productions like Daniel Fish’s Oklahoma to be concerned about the future of plays.

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Celebrate people who create joy.

After she’s done with the scalpel, surgeon makes art on kids’ casts.

Wesley Puttrich was born with two thumbs on his right hand, limiting his hand movement.

The 2-year-old had surgery for the condition, called preaxial polydactylyor bifid thumb, at Shriners Children’s Chicago hospital this year.

When he woke up, he was staring at something his pediatric orthopedic surgeon, Felicity Fishman, had left for him: A bright green and yellow Tyrannosaurus rex.

Fishman had drawn the dinosaur on his cast immediately after the surgery.

“If they can look at my drawing and remember a positive experience, that’s wonderful to me,” she said. “Anything you can do to connect with a child during the course of a surgery is helpful in maintaining that relationship.” (Washington Post).

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Spring makes us think about 💐 Flowers.

In NYC, that means flowers in Central Park, Riverside Park, Prospect Park and others.

Here is the Central Park Cherry Blossom tracker.

PEAK

WEST SIDE OF RESERVOIR

Mid-Park at 86th-96th Streets

Be sure to look up as you walk along the allée of Kwanzan cherry trees in the landscape west of the Reservoir. Their vibrant, double-petaled pink blooms will give you a jolt of energy as they put on their spring-time show. And don’t dawdle if you want to catch the deeply hued flowers of the early-blooming Okames, also scattered in this landscape between the Reservoir running track and the bridle path. While the Kwanzans haven't bloomed yet, the Okames have peaked!

Kwanzan

(Prunus 'Kanzan') Part of a 1912 gift from the Mayor of Tokyo to the United States, these deep pink flowers—also called Kanzan or Sekiyama—are concentrated along the west side of the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir by 90th Street. They are distinguished by their smooth bark marked with horizontal pores and bulbous double petal flowers that flaunt 20 to 50 petals. Like all plants, their peak bloom can never be fully predicted, but typically occurs between April and May.

Okame

(Prunus 'Okame') The Okame cherry produces abundant, mildly fragrant, rosy-pink flowers with one-inch-long petals in early spring. The flowers completely cover bare branches, appearing earlier than most and lasting longer than other flowering cherries. Even if you miss its early blooms, the tree remains lovely throughout the season thanks to its orange-tinted green leaves, which turn yellow, orange, and red in the fall.